Oil made its way into various public conversations between last month’s posting of The Oil Big Five and this month’s roundup of some of oil’s biggest and hottest topics. Looking back over the past few weeks, and then looking forward toward the rest of the year, it’s clear that there may not be any slowing down anytime soon.

Welcome, once again, to The Oil Big Five, where we ask our oil editors and analysts worldwide what they think are the most important or interesting topics in oil at the moment.

About 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in four sites along the US Gulf coast seems to have recently inspired the imagination of a cash-strapped Congress.

With US crude production nearing record highs and prices falling below $50/b, federal lawmakers are pushing to sell millions of barrels from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fund bills with little, or nothing, to do with energy.

Every hero needs a sidekick, every dog needs its day, and every oil and gas conference has to talk about bettering communication with the public, it seems.

The 2015 Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this week is no exception. Today is the first day of the conference, which regularly brings in about 90,000 attendees (or more) to hear from industry execs and elected officials and to learn about the companies, organizations and countries represented in booths and demonstrations.

The jaw-dropping letter that 47 Republican senators drafted to Iranian leaders as a warning shot over nuclear negotiations has some prominent signatories — the party’s entire Senate leadership team and a few possible presidential contenders in Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

But the letter, first reported by Bloomberg, is missing the signature of one significant senator: Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

November didn’t waste any time with big news stories featuring oil issues, and some of us are still trying to catch up on the sleep lost watching the outcomes of the US elections on November 4. Looking ahead and around the globe, it appears the rest of the month has plenty of potential to keep us guessing as to what will happen to the global oil industry.

For this month’s The Oil Big Five, we’re marking our calendars for the rest of November and eagerly awaiting what new developments could start emerging. These five topics were suggested by our Platts editors and analysts around the world, and we’re particularly interested in what you think. Any wagers as to the outcome of any of these topics, or any other issues that are especially important to you? Comment here or on Twitter with the hashtag #oilbig5, and we’ll feature your comments (and give you another chance to leave us your thoughts) later in the month.

Is the federal government in Washington boosting or hindering exploration hydrocarbon exploration on federal lands? Brian Scheid looks at that issue in this week’s Oilgram News column, Regulation & Environment.

The second installation of The Oil Big Five hit a snag when we realized that comments weren’t coming through on our blog platform, so this follow-up is a week later than we wanted.

But regardless of timing, we wanted to feature the comments from our readers, both here on the blog as well as on social media. We know what our oil experts and editors think are the most important trends worldwide, but what about you? Do you agree with what others have said?